The “Маnchurian Blitzkrieg” of 1945 and Japanese Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union

2019 ◽  
pp. 334-351
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
The Soviet Union

Trophies of War

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-242
Author(s):  
Brandon M. Schechter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Clear Objective ◽  
Better Than

This chapter focuses on all manner of trophies, from German prisoners of war to objects looted from houses in the Third Reich. Between 1941 and 1945, soldiers of the Red Army were confronted with an enemy who was often better dressed, wealthier, and initially much more effective. First on Soviet territory and then abroad, Red Army soldiers confronted an alien culture. For average citizens, this trip abroad was a unique chance to go beyond Soviet borders, one that came at great personal risk and with a clear objective—to destroy Fascism and the Third Reich. What soldiers saw along the way was puzzling. They not only reckoned with material objects and institutions that the Soviet Union had purged but were also left to wonder why people who lived materially so much better than they did had waged a genocidal war against them, marked by systematic rape, pillaging, and wanton destruction. The chapter then shows how a Soviet understanding of jurisprudence and a particular perception of the bourgeois world combined with a desire for vengeance to both justify looting and frame Soviet understandings of the Third Reich.

scholarly journals De oostfronttekeningen van Frans Van Immerseel

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Frank Seberechts
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Graphic Artist ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Important Message ◽  
Second World

De graficus Frans Van Immerseel is reeds voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog actief in het Vlaams-nationalisme. Hij sluit zich in het begin van de bezetting aan bij de Algemeene SS-Vlaanderen. Wanneer in de zomer van 1941 de Duitse troepen aan de veldtocht in de Sovjetunie beginnen, meldt hij zich als vrijwilliger voor het Vlaamsch Legioen.Van Immerseel wordt aangesteld tot oorlogsverslaggever aan het oostfront. Hij levert illustraties bij de artikels die over de veldtocht verschijnen in de collaboratiepers, zoals Volk en Staat, De SS Man en De Arbeidskameraad. Zijn tekeningen betreffen verschillende onderwerpen: het leven van de Duitse en de Vlaamse soldaten achter het front, soldaten in actie tijdens de gevechten, portretten van Vlaamse oostfrontvrijwilligers, portretten van Sovjetrussische krijgsgevangenen en schetsen van al dan niet door de oorlog getroffen gebouwen en landschappen. Zijn werk sluit nauw aan bij de visie van het nationaal-socialisme op de kunst, terwijl het voorts een belangrijke propagandistische boodschap draagt. De soldaten stralen heldhaftigheid en kracht uit, terwijl de geportretteerde Sovjetburgers uitdrukking moeten geven aan hun veronderstelde culturele en raciale inferioriteit. Meestal ondersteunen de tekeningen de bijdragen waarbij ze verschijnen, maar vele worden verschillende malen gebruikt bij telkens andere artikels.Van Immerseels werk verschijnt tot begin 1943 in de pers. Daarna valt hij in ongenade door de problemen die hij in het Vlaamsch Legioen kent en worden zijn tekeningen niet meer gepubliceerd.________The East Front drawings by Frans Van ImmerseelThe graphic artist Frans Van Immerseel was already active in Flemish Nationalism before the Second World War. At the beginning of the occupation he joined the General SS-Flanders. When the German troops started the campaign in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 he signed up as a volunteer for the Flemish Legion.Van Immerseel was appointed war reporter at the East Front. He produced illustrations for articles appearing about the campaign in the collaboration press, such as Volk en Staat (‘People and State’), De SS Man (‘The SS Man’) and De Arbeidskameraad (‘The Labour Comrade’). His drawings concerned various subjects: the life of the German and Flemish soldiers behind the front line, soldiers in action during battles, portraits of Flemish East Front volunteers, portraits of Soviet Russian prisoners of war and drawings of buildings and landscapes both unscathed and damaged by the war. His work followed the vision of National Socialism on art very closely and it also carried an important message of propaganda. The soldiers portrayed heroism and strength, whilst the depicted Soviet citizens were to express their supposed cultural and racial inferiority. Usually his drawings illustrated the contributions along side which they were published, but many of them were used a number of times for several different articles.The work of Van Immerseel was published until the beginning of 1943. Afterwards he fell into disfavour because of the problems he encountered in the Flemish Legion and his drawings were no longer published.

Instructed Silence, Constructed Memory: The SED and the Return of German Prisoners of War as ‘War Criminals’ from the Soviet Union to East Germany, 1950–1956

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA MORINA
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Security ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Nazi Past

After 1950, at least 23,000 German POWs remained in Soviet captivity as ‘war criminals’, and they were pardoned and released in several amnesties from 1950 to 1956. This article examines the political and propagandistic reactions of the ruling SED to the return of those prisoners. It analyses how the SED's attempts to reintegrate ‘war criminals’ into a socialist society related to the official politics of the past (Vergangenheitspolitik) and the construction of a memory of the Nazi past in East Germany. The SED's key strategy in dealing with these returnees – avoiding the question of individual and collective responsibility – is put into the context of the party's central ideological objective, namely to dissociate the socialist GDR from the legacy of Nazi Germany. On the basis of newly accessible documents from the archives of the former Ministry for State Security, the article also describes the intensive involvement of the Stasi in repatriation and reintegration matters at all levels of society.

The Role of History in the DDR

1976 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Dorpalen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
National Committee ◽  
German History ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Set Up

AbstractWhen Walter Ulbricht and other Communist Party leaders returned to Germany from their Soviet exile in April, 1945, they brought with them not only blueprints for the administration and rehabilitation of Germany and for her gradual conversion to socialism,1 but also detailed plans for the Marxist reinterpretation of German history and for the teaching of this revised history in German schools and universities. Work on these plans had been underway for more than a year; it was based on earlier studies designed to refute Nazi conceptions of Germany's past. Similarly, it could draw on efforts to implement the popular-front strategy of the preceding decade, pointing out to non-Marxists that the communist-sponsored anti-fascist popular front (Volksfront) was deeply rooted in German history. This concern with history had gathered further momentum in connection with efforts to denazify German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. To gain their support for the "National Committee 'Free Germany'," the Volksfront organization set up in the USSR in July, 1943, the communist leaders sought to convince these men that the goals of the Committee accorded with some of the noblest traditions of Germany's past. On this basis outlines were compiled for a new approach to German history, emphasizing the democratic progressive strands of that history. Similarly texts were drawn up to explain the inevitability of the defeat of reactionary Nazism and imperialism at the hands of the forces of progress as represented above all by the Soviet Union. The nation was thus to be led on to the path of peace and progress, but with the ultimate socialist goal barely mentioned. Preparations also were made to train at once teachers who could offer this type of instruction.2

Gender, Demobilization, and the Reordering of Societies after the First and Second World Wars

2020 ◽  
pp. 584-610
Author(s):  
Karen Hagemann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Second World

As industrialized total wars, the First and Second World Wars required the unprecedented involvement of civilians. After both wars had ended, the demobilization of large numbers of soldiers, medical staff and workers, the care for invalid veterans, war widows and orphans, and the relocation of millions of prisoners of war, displaced persons, expellees and refugees created immense political, social, and economic problems and challenges for the postwar societies, which also had to deal with the costs and wounds of war. This chapter explores the economic, social, and cultural demobilization and the reordering of societies after the First and Second World Wars with a gender perspective and focusses Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States. With these belligerents, victorious and defeated nations, market-based and communist societies, and democratic and authoritarian political systems can be compared. The chapter demonstrates the importance of the gender relations for the reconstruction of the postwar social order. After both wars, in all these societies, despite their differences, it was mainly the families, particularly the women, who had to heal the wounds of war.

Italian Communism and Soviet Terror

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
Richard Drake
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Before And After ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

The declassification of materials from the Russian archives has provided a good deal of new evidence about the relationship between the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Soviet Union both before and after World War II. Two newly published collections of documents leave no doubt that, contrary to arguments made by supporters of the PCI, the Italian party was in fact strictly subservient to the dictates of Josif Stalin. The documents reveal the unsavory role of the PCI leader, Palmiro Togliatti, in the destruction of large sections of the Italian Communist movement and in the tragic fate of Italian prisoners of war who were held in the Soviet Union during and after World War II. Togliatti's legacy, as these documents make clear, was one of terror and the Stalinization of the PCI.

The Katyń Massacres before the European Court of Human Rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 784-810
Author(s):  
Ireneusz C. Kamiński
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
European Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
Close Relatives

The Polish case of Janowiec and Others v. Russia was initiated by a group of close relatives of victims of the 1940 Katyń Massacres. Only in 1990 did the Soviet Union recognize that it had perpetrated the massacres. The applicants in the Janowiec case alleged that the Russian investigation into the massacres, which commenced in 1990 as transparent proceedings but was terminated in 2004 in secrecy, cannot be considered effective under the Convention. Furthermore, inasmuch as the Russian military prosecutors and courts held that the Polish prisoners-of-war “had disappeared” in the spring of 1940 or—if “hypothetically” killed—there might have existed just cause for such an execution, the applicants complained that such statements denied established historical facts and were tantamount to the denigrating and inhuman treatment prohibited by the Convention. The Grand Chamber judgment was not in the applicants’ favor. By a majority, the judges either declined to hear the case on its merits or held that there had been no violation of the Convention, turning—as the four minority judges wrote in their dissent—“the applicants’ long history of justice delayed into a permanent case of justice denied.” This article is a personal account of the principal lawyer acting on behalf of the applicants in the Janowiec case.

Mixing It

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Webster
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Second World

During the Second World War, people arrived in Britain from all over the world as troops, war workers, nurses, refugees, exiles, and prisoners of war—chiefly from Europe, America, and the British Empire. Between 1939 and 1945, the population in Britain became more diverse than it had ever been before. Through diaries, letters, and interviews, Mixing It tells of ordinary lives which in wartime conditions were often extraordinary. Among the stories featured are those of Zbigniew Siemaszko and ‘Johnny’ Pohe. Siemaszko’s epic journey to Britain began on a horse-drawn sleigh, in a village in Kazakhstan to which he had been deported by the Soviet Union, eventually taking him to the Polish army in Scotland via Iran, Iraq, and South Africa. Pohe, from New Zealand, was the first Maori pilot to serve in the RAF. He was captured after he had to ditch his plane, took part in what was subsequently called the ‘Great Escape’, and was one of fifty escapees who were recaptured and murdered by the Gestapo. This is the first book to look at the big picture of large-scale movements to Britain and the rich variety of relations between different groups. When the war ended, awareness of the diversity of Britain’s wartime population was lost and has played little part in public memories of the war. Mixing It recovers this forgotten history. It illuminates the place of the Second World War in the making of multinational, multiethnic Britain and resonates with current debates on immigration.

scholarly journals Нерепатрійовані: судові процеси над військовополоненими на Дніпропетровщині (друга половина 1940-х рр.)

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-140
Author(s):  
Світлана Сергіївна Павленко
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Labor Camps ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
Final Sentence ◽  
Detention Camps ◽  
Second World

One of the results of the Second World War was the presence of a large number of the Germans, Austrian, Romanian and other prisoners of war on the territory of the Soviet Union. Their  were actively used in the postwar reconstructions. The article is devoted to the analysis of personal histories of the former enemy soldiers who were kept in the USSR after 1945 and then they were convicted in the 1940's. The main sources are the materials of the Security Service of Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast archives. The mentioned above archival materials show that, despite the prosecution, the final sentence for prisoners of war was the same and they had to spend 25 years in labor camps. Particular attention is paid to the cases of George Ionescu, Rudolf Petri, Paul Edgard, Joseph Lecker and Johann Pikanski. In 1945–1950 they were held in detention camps No. 315 or 460, which were located on the territory of Dnipropetrovsk region. Each of these persons chose their own surviving strategy in the camp – escape attempt, avoiding work, finding opportunities to obtain information about the outside world, honestly abiding by rules or  sabotage. However, despite the chosen way, the process of repatriation was delayed for all of them until the 1950s. Only after the «Thaw» («Vidlyhy») epoch and the amnesty laws passing, the prisoners got possibility to return to their homeland.

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